


Fitter. Happier. More Productive.

by what_alchemy



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Season/Series 02 Spoilers, putting the avocado back together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-26
Updated: 2016-03-26
Packaged: 2018-05-29 05:43:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6361714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/what_alchemy/pseuds/what_alchemy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Matt tries to let go. He's not too good at it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fitter. Happier. More Productive.

**Author's Note:**

> Title shamelessly stolen from [Radiohead](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK0njkATf84), of course.

Foggy trickles into the periphery of Matt’s life. 

He’s the scent on the breeze on warm nights. He’s what Matt tastes near Marci’s loft. He’s the steady rhythm of Matt’s life in Hell’s Kitchen—the beat of his heart, the vibration of his laugh, the soft swell and deflation of his lungs. Matt couldn’t block him out if he tried. You can’t remove bedrock and expect the scaffolding to stand, after all. 

So Matt doesn’t try. He listens. He feels. He smells and tastes and cobbles together a picture of Foggy in his new, Matt-free life, and it’s good. Happy. Prosperous. He’s thriving, just like Matt always knew he could. He’s got a new apartment, airy and sunny and not falling down around him. Things with Marci are going better than they ever did in law school. He’s got an actual savings account from an actual bank that isn’t a repurposed coffee tin underneath his bed. If he misses Nelson & Murdock—if he misses _Matt_ —there’s no indication of it.

Matt’s happy for him.

—

It’s just a couple of kids. Gangly and tall, beginning to fill out but barely sixteen, Matt guesses. Matt looms on the fire escape above them, muscles tensing as the two boys close in on Foggy. It’s late. There’s no one else on the street, not even a cab. What’s he walking home for anyway? He’s got an open invite to stay over at Marci’s.

“Ha ha, guys,” Foggy says, sliding one hand down the strap of his satchel as he raises the other as if in surrender. “Just let me pass.”

“This suit thinks he can pass,” one of the kids says. 

“Thinks he doesn’t have to pay the tax,” says the other.

“Guys, I’m not even in a suit,” Foggy says, voice colored with exasperation. But Matt can hear it underneath the bravado: the uptick of his heart. He can taste the spike of adrenaline, the way sweat springs up around his hairline. 

“Suit-light, then,” says the first kid. 

“I can’t believe it’s not suit,” says the second. He flips a pocket knife out of his sleeve and the blade cuts the air, a resonant sibilant that rings in Matt’s ears, but not enough to drown out the thunder of Foggy’s pulse. 

“All right, dude,” Foggy says. “I got a twenty and a Starbucks gift card with like $17 left on it. It’s all yours, just let me keep my license and stuff.”

“Your shoes, too,” the second kid says. “That shit is _fancy_.”

“Sure,” Foggy says. “I mean there’s glass on the street and everything, but sure, my shoes, whatever.”

“And that watch,” says the first kid. “It’s my dad’s birthday soon.”

“And my watch,” Foggy says, unlatching said watch and flinging it at the kid.

“What about that man-purse? Looks like real leather.”

“Okay, first of all, this is a satchel, and secondly—”

Matt dropped down from the fire escape, and Foggy squeaked as he stumbled backwards, but the kids swore and jumped back. Matt held his hand out.

“Watch please,” he said. 

“Yo, I’m getting thwarted by Daredevil and shit,” one kid says. “This is so fucking cool.”

“You can tell your friends all about it, I’m sure,” Matt says. He makes a beckoning motion with his fingers. “Watch. Now.”

There’s a big gusty sigh, and the watch lands in his hand. 

“Don’t make a habit of this,” Matt says. “I’ll be watching you.”

One of the kids scoffs, but he’s being dragged away by his friend, and as they turn the corner, they start to whisper furiously back and forth about whether it’s awesome to have met Daredevil or awful to have landed on his shit list. Matt turns to Foggy and holds his watch out to him. Foggy’s heart is going haywire, and he doesn’t reach out in turn. He’s just staring. Matt clears his throat.

“I got your watch back,” Matt says. 

“Really?” Foggy says. “Wow, I didn’t notice.”

Matt feels the tips of his ears burn. He clenches his teeth and drops his hand to his side.

“Well,” he says. “You know where to find me.”

“Keep it,” Foggy says. “For services rendered.”

“Don’t be that way,” Matt says. “Please.”

Foggy laughs, brittle and bitter. 

“Hi, Matt, I’m fine, thanks for asking. How are you?”

Matt swallows back the saliva gathering under his tongue. Foggy turns his back to him and sets a quick pace away from him before stopping, clenching his fists, turning back around. 

“You got a lot of nerve, _Daredevil!_ ” he says, throwing his hands up. “How long have you been following me? Let me guess: this whole fucking _year_. Keeping tabs on me when all I get to know about you is what I see on the news, what I hear from people around town, what I fill in for myself when you haven’t made the headlines in a while. You have no boundaries, you know that? You’ve got no frigging sense of the fact that other people have—that they have—” He cuts himself off with a strangled huff of frustration.

“I’m not following you,” Matt says. “I just—”

“You just _happened_ to be right there, right then, sure.” Foggy waves a hand at him. “That kid wasn’t gonna stick me and we both know it, so you can cut any bullshit that might be brewing in your gullet right now. Spare me, Matt. Run off on your rooftops to someone who actually needs you.”

Foggy’s aim is true: that hits right about Matt’s diaphragm and sucks all his breath away. The smooth slats of Foggy’s watch bite into the flesh of Matt’s palm. He can’t say a word as Foggy grinds his teeth together, turns his back, and walks away.

—

Foggy’s putting in a late night alone at HC&B the next time Matt has occasion to show himself. It’s a nice office. Big, with a view. There’s a plant in the corner.

“Okay,” Foggy says when Matt emerges from the shadows, “how did you get in, because I’ll need to tell security to lock this shit up tighter.”

“They couldn’t if they tried,” Matt says. He tries on a nasty sort of smile, but Foggy snorts and Matt knows he’s fallen short. 

“What do you want?” he says. He leans back in his cushy chair and exhales long and slow.

“The Jusufi case,” Matt says. “I might have a…person of interest for you.”

The chair creaks as Foggy sits back up, spine at attention.

“Tell me you didn’t menace a witness, Murdock,” he says. 

“I didn’t!” Matt says. “I was kicking him in the head for something else when all of a sudden he starts talking about the Jusufi girl and how stupid Tower is. He’s in custody now.”

Foggy runs a hand through his hair. It must be getting long again.

“And how do you know I’m working the Jusufi case,” he says. He doesn’t even bother making it a question. Matt wonders when his presence became so wearying to Foggy. How long before they parted was Matt a burden to him? Years, probably, and it’s only with time and distance that Foggy now realizes it. Matt licks his lips.

“I hear things,” he says.

“Yeah? You do this whole—” He waves his hands in front of himself. “— _thing_ full time now. You’re not even a lawyer anymore. What do you do for money, Matt?”

The truth, which is that Matt got a staggering sum of money in trust no one but he could touch upon Elektra’s death, so much that he could live like the proverbial fat cat while burning wads of cash for heat and fun and still never work a day in his life, would be unpalatable to Foggy, he knows. 

“I get by,” he says instead.

“How, Matt.”

“Foggy—”

“No,” Foggy says. “Just tell me this one thing. One true thing, Matt, no bullshit, no hedging, no lawyering your way out of it. Now.”

Matt tilts his chin up. Foggy’s heart rate is higher than it should be. He’s looking up at Matt from his vantage at the desk, and he’s bracing himself for another patented Matt Murdock disappointment. Matt presses his lips together.

“Elektra,” he says. He manages, just barely, to keep from choking on the word, on the memory of what she became, what he had to do.

“Jesus Christ,” Foggy says. He plants his elbows on the desk and shakes his head. “You’re still working with her? What happened to ‘never again, Fog, hit me if I ever think about it.’”

“She died,” Matt says, and his voice is too loud between the clean bright walls of Foggy’s shiny new office. He lets out a shaky breath and gets a grip on himself. “She’s dead, Foggy. So don’t go worrying about me on that front.”

What passes for silence settles over them. There’s the hum of the lights, the distant din of the city outside, the growl of the lone security guard’s stomach seven floors away. And Foggy’s heart. 

“I’m sorry,” Foggy says, after a long time. Matt uncurls his fingers from the fists he didn’t realize he’d made. 

“You’re not,” Matt snaps before he can stop himself. 

“She meant something to you,” Foggy says. “Maybe you even loved her. So yeah, you know what, I’m sorry for your loss, because I’m a human being who can feel empathy and sympathy, and you don’t get to stand there in that get up more than a year after our last real conversation and act like I don’t know what it is to lose someone.”

“Foggy…”

“Get out, Matt,” Foggy says with a sigh, shuffling some papers around on his desk. “Get out and do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

Foggy tips his head up to look into the red eyes of the mask.

“Don’t come back,” he says. 

If Elektra’s loss hollowed him out, Foggy’s scrapes at what’s left of Matt’s carcass like some kind of carrion eater. Matt swallows, backing out the door.

“And your witness?” he murmurs.

“I’ll call Brett at some humane hour tomorrow,” Foggy says. 

Matt nods and lets the shadows swallow him again. He’s four rooftops away with the wind stinging his cheeks when he hears it. 

_”Thanks, Matt.”_

—

Matt gets an invitation to Foggy’s grandma’s 100th birthday extravaganza in the fall. He runs his fingers over and over the braille. Someone paid extra for the heavy paper, the special printer. _Miss your face!_ reads like an afterthought on the corner of the envelope in careful hand-poked pinholes. There’s a lump in his throat.

He picks up his cane and goes over to Foggy’s apartment, where he can hear Foggy putter around, flipping papers, cracking a beer, watching TV. His mouth is dry when he raises his hand to knock. The door is hard, a solid cherrywood against his knuckles. Matt breathes it deep, varnish and old wood, as he waits. 

Foggy’s up with a groan and his heart stumbles when the door swings open to reveal Matt.

“Um,” he says.

“Hey,” Matt says. Foggy crosses his arms and his shoulders hitch up near his ears, even as he tries on a nonchalant lean against the door jamb.

“What do you want?” Foggy says. Matt can feel his eyes on his body, palpable as fingertips. He resists the urge to straighten his spine and throw his shoulders back. Foggy hasn’t seen him in plainclothes in more than a year. A year and a half. It’s the novelty of it, nothing more.

“I, uh, got your grandma’s invitation,” Matt says. “I…thought we could discuss how we should proceed.”

Foggy shifts like an unfurling rosebud. 

“And this required an in-person visit because…” he says. 

The lump is back. Matt swallows around it.

“Didn’t know if you’d take my call,” he says.

Foggy sighs, and the air rearranges itself around his face when he pinches the bridge of his nose.

“No, I guess I wouldn’t have,” he says. “But shockingly, all you had to do was call my mom to decline the invite.”

“So you want me to decline.” 

Foggy looks at him again and moves aside.

“Just come in, would you?”

Matt glides in, folding up his cane. Foggy’s apartment smells of him, and of strawberry muffins, baked fresh yesterday, and of Thai food delivery in cheap restaurant tupperware. There’s furniture Matt’s never smelled before. Marci’s perfume, a good, subtle, expensive kind that Matt _hates_ , lingers in the upholstery, underneath that industrial warehouse smell that hasn’t had time to dissipate yet. Matt reaches out and runs his hand over the back of the newest couch.

“So here’s the thing,” Foggy says from behind him. “You can’t actually want to go to this party. Every Nelson, Flaherty, and Pitcairn in a hundred mile radius will be there, including sticky-fingered little kids who want to break your glasses and your cane and possibly your eardrums, meanwhile we get to smile and nod while my grandma and her half-dead friends and brothers talk about how much they really love the gays and the coloreds. It’s precisely no one’s idea of a good time, Matt, and we both know it, so what are you doing here, really?”

“I like your grandma and her old-timey racism.”

“Matt.” 

Matt tips his chin into his chest and lets his hand drop from the couch. 

“This was a mistake,” he says. “Sorry to waste your time.”

“You gave up everything to be Daredevil, Matt,” Foggy says, quiet. “Our firm. The law. Karen. My family. Me. You don’t get to pick us up when you’re feeling sorry for yourself and drop us again when pesky human relationship obligations crop up, like reciprocal care and effort.”

He nods briskly. He can feel Foggy peering at him with concern.

“I’m sorry my mom invited you,” he says. “You know how she gets. She’s probably been planning this since the day I told her Nelson & Murdock was done, but you can’t go, okay? It’ll hurt me, Matt. This—all of this. It hurts me. Do you get that?”

The humidity in the room had risen as Foggy spoke. Matt ignores the thickness in voice. 

“I—yes,” he says. He dips his head in a decisive nod and tries to smile. Foggy’s heart clatters painfully against his ribs, and he looks away from the car wreck that must be Matt’s face. “I’ll call your mom when I get home.”

“You don’t have to,” Foggy says. “I can deal with it. Guilt her a little for doing this to me.”

“If you’re sure.”

“Yeah.”

Matt unfolds his cane and moves toward the door.

“Take care of yourself, Matt,” Foggy says at his back. Matt pauses.

“I always do,” he says. 

Foggy wants to say something, but the two of them, they’re beyond that now. Matt closes the door behind him.

—

Matt saves Marci from assault and theft in October. She’s shaking, but her voice is clear and there’s no hint of tears. Matt would be impressed if he hadn’t stomped out all his admiration for her a long time ago. He tells her to call the cops after he’s secured the unconscious perp and makes to vaunt up onto the rooftops, but she grabs his shoulder and he freezes.

“Do I know you?” she says. She drops her hands to her hips and assesses him.

“No,” he says. 

“Hm.”

“Just one of those faces,” Matt says. 

“Half a face, _Daredevil_ , and no, it isn’t.”

Matt swallows and cocks his head. Her heart is calming, and the thief’s is clean and even. Foggy’s is blocks and blocks away, a steady metronome. Stale piss wafts up from the sidewalk, yesterday’s rotting food, that _perfume_. Matt presses his lips together and draws a deep breath in through his nose. He consciously unclenches his fists as he lets it out.

“Is there someone you can call?” he says. “Ma’am?”

Marci snorts, and Matt can feel the roving of her eyes down his body and back up again. 

“I don’t know,” she says, “maybe you should call him for me.”

Matt’s own heart breaks deafening through the filters he set up against himself decades ago like a train off its rails. 

“The thief will wake up in a few minutes,” he says. “So. You should call. The cops.”

“You know,” Marci says, “ _pathetic_ is never a word that came to mind about Daredevil before tonight.” She takes a step, and then another, and another, until she’s circled him and picked him apart with her eyes like the bird of prey she is. “But, funny, I kind of always thought it about this guy I used to know in law school. You remind me of him.” 

“Don’t make me regret saving you,” Matt says. She’s standing in front of him again, heart calm, spine relaxed, head high, and he can feel the way she twists her mouth into a smirk. 

“Uh huh,” she says, flat. “Do you want to know why I thought this guy was just. so. pathetic, Mr. Daredevil?”

“I’m sure it’s not my business.”

Marci leans in and stage whispers into Matt’s ear.

“Really bad at interpersonal relationships,” she says. She steps back and pats his cheek. “Lonely, but trying desperately to prove he wasn’t. Jealous. Possessive of his only little friend. Maybe a little repressed. _So_ painful to watch, I’m sure you know how that is.”

“You should call the cops before _your attacker_ wakes up,” Matt says, backing into the shadows. “Stay safe.”

Her peals of laughter bounce off the brick and concrete, the steel of the scaffolding and fire escapes.

“Stay safe!” he hears her say as he picks up speed. “God, that’s good. _Stay safe_. Hello, yeah, I’ve just been saved by an idiot in bondage gear, could you send a couple officers my way?” She rattles off her location, says a few more things about her rescue, and then hangs up. Matt’s out of range for her voice but in range for Foggy’s when he hears him pick up the phone.

“Marce?” Foggy says, and Matt’s not sure if he should get closer or farther away. “What’s going on? Oh, Jesus, are you kidding? Christ, keep your voice down, would you? Listen, just stay where you are, I’m coming to get you. No. No! Look, fine, I’ll pick you up at the station then, okay? Please don’t say anything? Yeah. Yeah. Look, I know, okay? I know. No, this is really not what I— Just. Please. Yeah. Thank you thank you thank you. Okay, I’ll get a cab, be there in like twenty.”

Matt slumps against the brick of the alley a few buildings down from Foggy’s apartment. He listens to Foggy dress himself in a hurry, listens to the slam of his door and the turn of the lock. Listens to his heart, moving along too quickly. Matt’s cold, and in the distance, he can hear someone crying. She’s young, she’s terrified, and he has to get up, has to go make sure she’s okay. But not until Foggy’s in the cab. Not until Foggy’s gone.

—

What’s left of the Hand spanks Matt pretty bad not long after the incident with Marci. Claire’s there, vowing up and down that she’s done with this, done with _him_ , and he’s too torn up to get out of his own bed when she snatches his phone away and dials Foggy.

“Don’t—” he gasps. 

“Someone’s got to take care of your dumb ass,” Claire says, “and it sure isn’t gonna be me.”

“He doesn’t,” Matt says, breath coming too hard behind cracked ribs. “He doesn’t, not anymore.”

“Then why’s he still in your phone?” she says. On the other end, Foggy picks up, his tone wary. “Hey, Thug Life,” Claire says. “You need to come over to make sure this fool doesn’t fall asleep with his concussion. Can you do that for me?”

It’s been two years. Matt expects to hear “no,” or “he’s not my problem anymore.” Instead, Foggy sighs, and Matt can imagine the way he presses his hand to his forehead when he says, “Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for letting me know. Be there in fifteen.” 

Claire tosses the phone back onto the bed and turns her back to him, gathering up the first aid stuff she brought over because she can’t trust him to have his fully stocked. She plants herself at his bedside and says, “Don’t pout.”

“I’m not,” Matt mumbles. She scoffs.

“Well, you are, but who am I to destroy your dreams?”

“We’re not friends,” Matt says. “Me and Foggy, not anymore.”

Claire hesitates before reaching up and brushing the hair off his forehead.

“Some things go deeper than whether or not two people are on speaking terms,” she says, her voice soft. 

“I can’t—”

“You can and you will.”

“…I can’t do this to him again, Claire, I can’t. I can’t, please.”

He hears her swallow. She sits back and looks away.

“Let him decide that, would you?” she says. “Relax. I wish you’d take some painkillers.”

“I can’t, I can’t.”

“Yeah,” she mutters. “Yeah, I figured.”

Foggy gets there and Claire leaves after giving him a litany of instructions. He stands in the doorway of Matt’s bedroom when she’s gone, arms crossed over his chest, and he sighs. Matt doesn’t bother to tilt his head his way.

“Marci won’t shut up about you, you know,” he says after a while. Matt issues a questioning grunt low in his throat and points his face in Foggy’s direction. “Don’t worry, it’s 90% glowing reviews of your ass in that get up and 10% merciless mocking of the both of us, but she’s into you now. It only took ten years and assault on a criminal.”

“She—won’t go to the police,” Matt says.

Foggy shakes his head and takes the seat Claire vacated. He kicks back and rests his feet on the edge of Matt’s mattress. He must have taken his shoes off in the entryway. 

“This is too juicy,” he says. “She’s gonna live off it for years. You shouldn’t have saved her; she probably could have had that goon on the ground in tears with a few well-placed verbal eviscerations.”

Matt licks his lips and settles his head back in the pillow to face the ceiling again.

“I’m glad you two are together,” he says. “I’m—I’m glad you’re happy, Fog.”

Foggy doesn’t say anything, but after a moment he plants his feet back on the floor and leans forward, elbows on knees. He’s wearing a soft, worn cotton t-shirt and matching pajama pants. He doesn’t smell like Marci. Matt frowns.

“Marci and I aren’t a thing, Matt,” he says. “Haven’t been for years. You know that.”

“No,” Matt says. “You are.”

“How hard did you hit your head?”

“But you—” Matt clamps his mouth shut before it can spit out something invasive and creepy.

Foggy’s shaking his head and leaning back again, resigned.

“We’re colleagues,” he says. “We spend time together. She’s been a good friend to me these last few years. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever you…taste or whatever during your covert little surveillance sessions, you’ve got the wrong end of it. Me and Marci don’t work, we know that.”

Matt swallows around the dryness in this throat. Foggy lifts a glass of water to his lips and Matt strains his neck forward to take a sip.

“You don’t have to stay,” he says when he’s quenched. “I’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, not buying it,” Foggy says. “You’re stuck with me, Murdock.”

Matt shuts his eyes. They may not work, but they got so tired sometimes. Just so tired.

“Hey, Matty, look alive,” Foggy says. He shakes Matt’s shoulder and Matt’s eyes snap open again. Foggy’s pulled the chair up closer to the edge of the bed, closer to Matt’s head. “Tell me something funny.”

“Um.”

“Come on, Matt,” Foggy says. “It’s three in the morning, and I’m gonna have to use one of my PTO days on you. I deserve a laugh, all right? So come on, what’s funny?”

Matt blinks, slow.

“Why did the koala fall out of the tree?” he says.

A head tilt. The slick little sound of a cautious smile.

“I don’t know,” Foggy says. “Why?”

“It was dead.”

There is a moment when Matt can’t hear anything. Not a heartbeat, not the traffic, not the wind, not the distant din of voices and sirens and TV shows. And then Foggy bursts into laughter, and it’s all Matt can hear.

—

Matt starts going to Foggy’s trials. He kills opening and closing statements these days. Makes it seem effortless to get up there and pontificate to a jury that’s helpless but to be rapt, hanging on every word. His delivery is natural, poised, and convincing, as if the words tripping from his tongue just occurred to him moments before and arranged themselves to perfection behind a row of flawless white teeth. But he practices, Matt knows. In his office and in his apartment, pacing back and forth, throwing a twenty-year-old Koosh ball from hand to hand, Foggy practices, and frets, and revises when he stumbles. He records himself and adjusts his diction, his pauses, his gesticulations. Matt remembers when this was his job. Remembers Foggy leaning in the doorway, watching him with admiration practically pouring out of him. Remembers what it was to hammer the last nail in the coffin of a case with one pitch-perfect performance and soak up all of Foggy’s silent worship from across the courtroom. But Foggy—Foggy’s blossomed at HC&B, where Matt’s darkness could not keep his bloom from the light.

Foggy knows he’s there in the audience. He never lets his gaze rest on Matt’s face, and he never says anything, never calls or shows up at Matt’s apartment, but he knows. Matt can feel it.

—

The day after a big win that ends up with Foggy’s picture in the paper beside his exonerated client, Matt gets a braille note in the mail.

 _Like what you don’t see, Murdock?_ it says, and Matt smirks.

Matt slips his reply into Foggy’s office mail.

 _Always did, Nelson_.

A few weeks later.

_I can’t tell if Hogarth busting my balls means she likes me or hates me._

Matt sends back, _Why not both?_

_No man could live with such ambiguity._

_I believe in Foggy Nelson._

They don’t text. They don’t even correspond every day. But Matt has learned to look forward to the mail.

—

The day comes that Foggy helps a client with powerful enemies and lands back in the hospital with rebar through his shoulder. He’ll need months and months of physical therapy to get a full range of motion back. The three guys who did it to him will need full body casts after Foggy whispered _Matt, I need you_ between heaves of air.

It’s the middle of the night and Foggy’s asleep, but Matt sits at his bedside cradling his helmet. He leans over it, elbows on his knees, and sets the knot of his own hands against his lips. He’s praying, not for Foggy’s life or even swift healing, but for the strength to be the man Foggy once believed he could be. 

The heart monitor spikes, and he lifts his head.

“Jesus,” Foggy mutters. “Where’d you come from?”

“Hell’s Kitchen,” Matt says, and God help him, his stomach flips when Foggy huffs out a pained little laugh.

“Wow, me too,” he says. “ _Fuck_ , this hurts.”

“Do you need to call a nurse?” Matt asks. “I can come back later, during human being hours. Dressed like a human being.”

Foggy snorts. 

“Where would the fun be in that?”

“Fog, seriously,” Matt says. “Maybe you could get more morphine or something.”

“What I need is for you to stay, Matt,” he says, and he sounds so exhausted Matt’s stomach hurts with it. “Can you do that for me? Please?”

“Yes,” Matt whispers. Foggy’s eyes flutter shut.

“Thought you didn’t do hospital visits,” he murmurs.

“Maybe I’ve learned from my mistakes,” Matt says. 

“Mm.”

“I really needed you, you know?”

“Yeah,” Matt says. “Yes.”

“Did you get them?”

“What, your notes?”

“The guys,” Foggy says, his words slurring together. “They hurt me.”

“Yeah, Fog,” Matt says. “I got ’em, don’t worry. Sleep now.”

“In jail?”

“In custody.” At a different hospital under lock and key, but Foggy hears what Matt doesn’t say and slides a disapproving look his way even through the haze of impending sleep. 

“They gonna be okay?”

Matt sighs. 

“Unfortunately,” he says. 

“And you’ll stay.”

“As long as you need me to.”

“I miss you,” Foggy says, and the tragedy of it is that Matt knows he’s already asleep.

—

Matt shows up at Foggy’s door bearing groceries. He lifts them up and waves them at him when Foggy opens the door in a sling.

“Matt,” Foggy says, and clears his throat. “What are you…”

“Let me help you out a little while you’re healing up,” Matt says. “I got some free time these days.”

“You don’t have to,” Foggy says, but he shuffles aside to let Matt in anyway. 

“I want to,” he says. Foggy makes his ginger way to the couch, where he levers himself down, and Matt works on putting the groceries away. “Lunch?” he asks. “I’ve got a bunch of produce and some chicken and pork chops, so you just let me know what you’re in the mood for and I’ll make it happen.”

“Um, I remember living with you, Murdock,” Foggy says. “Let’s leave the cooking to me and keep my very nice apartment building decidedly un-flambéd.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know my kitchen skills have improved a lot.”

“Somehow, it’s just not a risk I’m willing to take.”

“I’m not letting you lift a finger around this place ’til you’re a hundred percent, bud.”

“Why are you here, Matt?” 

Matt pauses with the fridge door open, hands braced against the kitchen island. 

“I want to help you get better,” he says. 

“See, I’m trying to figure out why this is somehow your problem and I’m coming up blank. So help me out here.”

Matt’s throat feels thick. He tries to swallow. He nudges the fridge door shut with his foot. 

“I was good enough to stop those jagoffs from killing you,” he says, and his voice is too low, too ragged. “But I’m not good enough to coddle you a little bit after?”

Moist little suction sounds: Foggy’s rubbing his eyes. 

“Look, thanks for doing that,” he says. “I’m grateful, really. But it’s over and I don’t need…whatever this is.”

“What if I do?” Matt blurts.

Matt can feel Foggy staring at him. He can feel the little intake of breath, the way Foggy’s mouth hangs open in a lowercase o.

“Matt…”

“You said you missed me, in the hospital room,” Matt says, the words rushing out of him before he can stop them. “And maybe it’s not polite of me to mention things you say under the influence, but I haven’t got a lot left to lose, do I? So here are my cards all laid out, Foggy. I miss you too. I miss us. And maybe we can never have what we had before, maybe that’s done. But I’ll be damned if I have to spend the rest of my life living five blocks away from you without ever trying to build something new. I refuse to be that kind of coward, Foggy, so if you want me to leave, you tell me right now, but know that I know when you’re lying.”

Matt is surprised to find his breath coming too hard, and Foggy’s grinding his teeth together as he stands up slow and tense and makes his way towards him until all that stands between them is counter space. 

“You can’t act like the past year has meant nothing,” Matt says, and he hates that his voice has come out pleading. “All our notes. The preening in the courtroom. Taking care of me. Asking me for help. This is not nothing, Foggy. This. Is not. Nothing.”

“You piss me off, Murdock, you know that?” Foggy’s voice is low and rough. “God, you piss me off so much.”

“Foggy.”

“We’re not friends,” Foggy says like whiplash, and Matt’s left gasping. “We’re never gonna be friends again. That’s over, do you understand?”

Matt can’t speak. He swallows, and it hurts.

“It was an illusion,” Foggy says. His tone’s gone gentle now, and it only tightens Matt’s lungs up worse. 

“It wasn’t,” Matt says. “It wasn’t, Foggy, I swear.”

“Shut up, Matt,” Foggy says. “It’s your turn to listen to me, so shut up and let me say this.” 

Matt’s mouth trembles. He seals it shut when he feels Foggy’s eyes rove over it.

“You lied about your senses,” Foggy says. “You lied about needing me to lead you. You lied about what you could do and what you could sense off other people. You were always holding something back from me, Matt, and not small potatoes stuff—basic tenets of who you were as a person were always carefully squirreled away. So even if I knew parts of you, I was never gonna know all of you until you came clean, and you were never gonna come clean.” Matt opens his mouth for a rebuttal, but Foggy raises a quelling hand. “We both know circumstances beyond your control forced your hand,” he says. “You were never gonna come clean, so that means I was never really gonna know you, which means I was never really your friend. And then when I did know all of you…” He swallows and looks down before raising his face back up to look Matt in the eye as best he could. “When I did, you seemed to go off the rails. You were really reckless at the end there, Matt. You really scared the shit out of me.

“But here’s the thing,” Foggy continues, and Matt feels a sidelong glance slide over him before skittering away again. “I didn’t want to face this, refused to for the longest time, but in the end I had no choice but to look at my life, at my job and my apartment and how I was finally getting my shit together and you weren’t there and I was so, so, _so_ damn angry with you, Matt. I looked at the last thirteen years of my life and realized I’d lied to you, too. Every second of every day, I lied to you. I thought you knew, the night I found you all flayed on the floor, but then…it didn’t fit. Maybe you knew I’d lied, but not what about. Maybe you knew I was a liar, but you stuck around me anyway. Maybe the two of us matched, but your noble ass was just that little bit better because you knew what I was and you hung around me anyway. Unreliable and reckless and a fuck up in the extreme, Matty, but…but there, with my lying ass, regardless. And when it came down to it, I couldn’t return the courtesy.”

“…what you are?” Matt says. “I don’t—Foggy, I don’t understand. What lie?”

Foggy snorts and rubs a weary hand over the straps of his sling.

“How in love with you I was,” he says, rueful. “How in love with you I _am_ , despite everything. So it’s my turn to be plain, even if it’s not polite.” He takes a deep breath. “We’re not friends, Matt. We played at being friends for a long time, but that’s over now. I won’t be your friend again. I can’t. Pretending I don’t want you the way I do—it wears on me, and I’m done doing it. You and me—we’re capable of getting by without each other. We’ve proven that now. But this is where we decide if we’re better together or apart. If we’re gonna be strangers, or if we’re gonna be partners. Equal. Open. A united front.” Foggy straightens as much as his injury will allow and tilts his chin up defiantly. “Those are my cards, Murdock. Your move.”

Matt can’t say anything. Slowly, telegraphing his movements, he rounds the corner of the kitchen island until he’s beside Foggy, and he fishes in his pocket until he pulls out Foggy’s watch. Foggy holds his breath as Matt latches it back around his wrist. He reaches out to touch the fine ends of Foggy’s hair. He feels the way Foggy’s breath shudders out of him. 

“Your hair’s grown,” Matt says, voice like sandpaper.

“It—” Foggy draws a shaky lungful of air. “It drives Hogarth crazy.”

“Hm.”

There’s going to be a lot to hash out. Rules and lines of communication and establishing new foundations. Matt, reining in the devil inside him. Foggy, learning to let Matt into the night. But for now—for now there could just be this. The two of them, fresh produce in a sunny room, the alchemy of two people forging something new together. 

“Admit it,” Matt says. “You get a little kick out of vexing her.”

“Who says _vexing_ , Matt, are you a thousand years old?”

“Yes,” Matt says. “I had to walk uphill five miles both ways with no shoes to get my Nickelodeon.”

“While blind!”

“Didn’t slow me down too much.”

“Matt—” 

Matt’s hand slides fully into Foggy’s hair to cup the back of his head. His breath hitches over Matt’s mouth.

“Sorry I was an idiot,” Matt says. Foggy laughs, humid in the space between them.

“Past tense?”

“Sorry about my _ongoing_ idiocy, then.”

“I’d ask you not to do it again, but even I’m not that optimistic.”

“Shh,” Matt says. “Don’t kill the honeymoon just yet.”

“Fucking kiss me already, Murdock, jeez.”

Matt cradles Foggy’s cheek. Sets his mouth, soft, against Foggy’s. Foggy tastes how sunlight feels, tracking the day across silk sheets. 

 

**End**


End file.
